


Learn By Doing

by blue_like_barnes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Drunk Steve Rogers, F/M, Face-Sitting, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:55:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24377608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_like_barnes/pseuds/blue_like_barnes
Summary: Bucky learns the internet can only teach you so much. And oftentimes it causes more worry than good.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Reader, James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Comments: 10
Kudos: 105





	Learn By Doing

The scope of his own naivety is first called into question at a party.

An after party, rather. Low key wind down in the private sector of the compound, when the commerciality of his star spangled friend is dangerously low, and the probed limits of Asgardian mead dangerously high.

Bucky’s seated in the corner of the room, occupied by your weight on his thighs and the smooth fabric of your blouse beneath his palms, when Banner suggests super soldier sobriety is tantamount to quantity consumed versus the rate at which it’s burned off. That _volume_ can outpace metabolism, and Steve, in a moment of patent brazenness, quips, “Let’s put it to the test.”

It’s the closest to three sheets to the wind Bucky’s seen him, barring a night before the war, when a pull of Aspironal left him soft and sobbing, bird boned limbs piled onto the floor of their shared apartment, brotherly adoration expressed through trembling gasps.

The whispered memory makes you laugh as you press back into him, sipping ice water that beads and slips in droplets from your glass, freckling your top with deeper flecks of scarlet. 

Steve’s different now: taller, broader, but those same saccharine bits of him flourish as he stands in the center of the room, chalking up a cue and grinning placidly at his friends. 

He bobbles a bit as he leans forward, and Bucky snorts laughter into your shoulder as Steve scratches the shot, hanging his head defeatedly over the table and huffing out a breathy whine, “Ah- _shoot_.”

There’s a brief, consoling hand to his back, and when the woman who offers it takes a step back to excuse herself from the table, Steve rights himself and turns to her with a sappy, doe eyed stare, “Because I’m bad at pool?”

Sharon Carter fights back a smile. Amused exasperation mixed with mild threat directed among their smirking peers flashed in her features as she glances at him and answers, “Because my feet hurt, and I’d like to sit down.” 

“Baby,” Steve protests, catching her by the elbow, burying liquored breath into her hair, “babybabybaby…I’ve got your favorite seat in the house,” he whispers, too loud for the company he keeps, “right. _here_.”

In the titter of reaction that follows, among the snickered laughter Bucky doesn’t quite understand, he watches Sharon’s face. Stoic but flushed, red as your shirt.

_____

There’s a quiet intimacy about the night that follows. 

Hours later, when your eyes grow so heavy Bucky kisses your lips and asks you to stay. You brush your teeth alongside him and smile through the mirror with a sleepy stare as he gathers his hair into a soft tufted ponytail at the nape of his neck. 

He fishes out one of his shirts he loves, an oversized, soft heathered gray with maroon ringed collar, and drapes it over the edge of the bed before slipping beneath the covers, half expecting you to take it back into the bathroom to change.

His heart kicks a flutter when you don’t. 

A warm bloom in the center of his chest, a progression he notes with pleasure as you slip out of your top and pants and fold them onto the chair across from the bed.

“Would you set your alarm for me?” You ask, unfastening the clasps to your bra. Lace slips slowly off your shoulders and he can’t help his mouth going a bit dry as his eyes wander over the curve of your breasts.

“Six?”

You don’t miss the breathlessness, the slip of the number sounding an awful lot like _sex_ on his lips, and you glance at him as you tug his t-shirt over your head, eyes coy and sparkling with mirth. 

_Tired_ _eyes_ , he reminds himself sternly, when you slip beneath the sheets and nuzzle into the crook of his arm, and he punches the volume on his phone to make sure you’ll hear it. 

He feels a pang of guilt for keeping you up so late before a busy work day. Still, he can’t deny the inexplicable thrill of said lateness causing you to stay. 

It’s all he ever wants you to do now.

“Set,” he confirms, casting the phone to the side and shifting to better accommodate your body in his arms. He lets his free hand wander down to the curve of your back and kisses your temple as you shimmy closer, and his heart beats this joyful, contented kind of rhythm as he gives you a playful squeeze, “I’ll get up, too,” he says. 

“Yeah?”

“Mm. Fix your coffee. Maybe run with Steve after. I’ve been blowing it off-“

“I have a feeling he might be the one blowing it off tomorrow, poor guy,” you chuckle, words thick with sleep already. But they surface the same perplexity from earlier.

He hadn’t asked in the moment, in the aftermath of Sharon Carter turning the shade of a beetroot, and Barton holding back laughter until tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes. 

If he’s honest, there’s something alienating about feeling as if you’re the only one caught on the outside of a joke. But there is safety in you. Alone with you. And your fingers are settling along the band of his boxer briefs when he murmurs, “Can I ask a stupid question?”

A beat of silence passes before your soft, thoughtful reply, “Probably not.” 

It makes him smile, despite. “I feel like I’ve missed something. About all that…”

“Oh?” 

“I just,” he hedges. “I mean, _you_ were sitting in _my_ lap at the time…”

“Oh,” you blip into the silence, and then, “Honey,” but it’s a genuine endearment and not a condescension. A term you haven’t used often and yet it’s one, he decides, as you attempt to snuggle even closer, he actually really likes. 

“He wasn’t talking about his lap,” you say between stifled yawn. Easy as ever. As if you were relaying to him the weather, “He was talking about his face.”

“That’s…that’s a thing?”

“Yeah, Buck. That’s a thing.”

“ _Oh_.”

When he finally well and truly processes that, your breaths are on the steady, whispered wind of sleep. 

“ _Shit_ -” he murmurs into the dark. 

___

He’d welcome six AM with a lot more vigor if it always meant warm, steamy showers with you. Lazy kisses and smiles with half lidded eyes and the scent of his body wash scrubbed into your skin.

You make an outfit out of one of his button fronts. A red one, because after seeing you in the color last night he realizes he’s much more fond of it than previously thought. You tuck it in, and he helps you cuff the sleeves above your elbows as you loose the few buttons below your neck. He brews you a thermos of coffee, creamed and sugared the way you like, and you thank him with a single slow, languorous kiss that leaves him desperately aching, again, for you to stay.

He ends up running on his own, an uncanny occurrence, but as you predicted Steve is nowhere to be found, and Bucky needs an outlet to sweat out those incessant thoughts of you in various states of undress. He also needs to pound out the blatant and newly nagging realization of his sudden sexual ineptitude.

He’s not an idiot.

Not a clueless poster child for artless chastity, but the 21st century has surprised him in more ways than one, and this new proverbial fist of prowess has seemingly punched him hard in the inexperienced dick.

It shouldn’t mean so much. A simple explainer you hadn’t judged him for or revisited in the morning. But despite that mysterious, precipitous brush the general public tended to paint him with, he’d only ever had sex once before you. 

Not with one person. _Once_. Period. 

Her name had been Evelyn, and it had been this desperately awkward, stilted thing he’d mistaken for love, rushed outside of a birthday party the week before his deployment.

He’d gone along with talk during the war. He’d snorted away Dugan’s musings of which set of lips constitute a _real_ French kiss. He’d tipped his head and politely excused himself from beautiful women who’d trailed manicured nails along the collar of his uniform and purred the sweetest words into his ear.

“I have a girl back home,” he’d lied. But Evelyn had stopped answering his letters a long time ago by that point, and truth be told, he was just desperately romantic. 

Also- he didn’t know shit. 

Still, at the bottom of the barrel of inexpertise, he supposed he rather selfishly assumed he wasn’t alone. Because, despite the fact that he was built more like a Clydesdale now, Bucky couldn’t help but sometimes see in Steve that kid from Brooklyn, small and recklessly fearless in all areas of life but women. 

For him to be espousing things in his careless state of drunkenness that Bucky had never even heard of. 

Well. It’s enough to make him feel like a schmuck. 

He nurses that stupid machismo and wounded ego for the entire way home.

And then, as with most problems, he resolves to get over himself. To figure it out.

_______

Steve’s holed himself in the garage, elbow deep in a carburetor rebuild for a Norton Commando that’s not so much passion project as it is a means to keep restless hands and an even more restless mind occupied in their downtime. 

After a lifetime of him punching his way through hobbies, Bucky figures this a more productive catharsis. They don’t even have to exchange greetings, he simply drags the service manual between them, and joins in.

They work the way they always do, synced up like cogs in a well oiled machine, building a well oiled machine. And when they do start talking, they talk about everything. Stupid things, important things. Things that don’t matter, and things that matter too much. They talk about tank rust and spark plugs and chain and sprockets. They talk about the absolute fucking nuissance that is time. And…they talk about you. Sharon and you. It’s nice.

They’re cleaning up when Steve goes pink at the ears after Bucky’s suggestion they all saw a whole new side of him the night before.

“Go on,” he sighs, resigned as he shoves dirt smudged fingers into Bucky’s shoulder, “yuk it up. Barton can’t even look at me without laughing, and Tony’s called me _loveseat_ all morning.”

Bucky laughs, catching the rag Steve snaps at his chest, “Well, neither are the barometer of maturity, are they?” Still, that nagging ineptitude has him confessing, while Steve scrubs soot off his nose with the collar of his t-shirt, “I didn’t even know what you meant, anyway.”

Blue eyes peek at him over dirty white cotton, and Bucky feels heat prick little circles onto his cheeks as he tries to clarify, “The uh…you know.”

Quickly, he realizes by avenue of Steve is not exactly how he wants to navigate this. And as color wicks up Steve’s neck, Bucky searches for something to add to mitigate the blooming awkwardness.

“I was wondering how _you_ knew what it meant, actually.”

Nope. _No_ _no_. That’s not it.

“Ah,” Steve chokes, hand raising to the back of his neck as his brows shoot skyward. 

“Not that I was _actively_ wondering,” Bucky flails, “Jesus. I just meant, you know, I guess I’ve known you for forever and hell I’d never even heard of that before,” somewhere in his mind, he’s urging himself to stop. His mouth, however, continues on, “and I guess I was like, _how_ _does_ _Steve_ -”

“What are you asking?” Steve interrupts, though not such a blessed reprieve, “ _Are_ you…asking?”

“What?” Amid his excessive babble, Bucky realizes he’s moved much closer to the door than he was before. Closer to the light and away from the line he’s learned, despite a lifelong friendship, he’s not quite ready to cross, “No,” he says, “I… _no_.”

He turns around, firing off some excuse about being late for a meeting that doesn’t exist and closes the gap to freedom.

“Hey, Buck-”

It’s an effort to turn back, to face flamed cheeks framed by cherry red ears and a sheepish half smile as Steve gesticulates awkwardly with his grease coated rag.

“Internet’s your friend,” he says meekly, hesitates, and grimaces again, “I mean. _I’m_ your friend, too. If you really-”

“Nope. No.”

“ _Good_ ,” relief reanimates him.

“Internet,” Bucky says, turning with finality and stepping through the door, “Got it. Thanks.”

“Yeah…” Steve’s sigh trails behind.

________

The internet is _not_ his friend.

It’s his fault. Probably his fault, overestimating modern convenience and running under the naive assumption that Googling anything containing the terms face and sit would return wholesome, informative content. 

It’s informative alright, and his body is still burning long after he’s snapped his laptop shut and buried his face into pillows that still smell faintly of you, lamenting over his sexual vanillary.

He’s that way still when his phone lights up with your picture. A snapshot of eyes peeked over crimson blooms of amaryllis, blush garden roses and a spray of eucalyptus. 

**You** **color** **coordinated** **my** **outfit** **today** , reads the text beneath, wicking a soft and longing smile onto his lips.

He remembers those same sweet eyes meeting his for the first time. Peered over similar red blooms tucked into an opulent, Pepper Potts reeked centerpiece braced in your arms. 

He remembers that unexplained whoosh of his gut. Of his heart dropping _into_ his gut and his feet, of their own volition, subverting original trajectory to beeline toward you. He remembers his outstretched arms and his eager _Let me_ _help_? And the way it made you smile. And how that smile changed everything.

 **So** **beautiful** , he quickly taps back, **and** **the** **flowers** **are** **nice** , **too**.

With renewed determination and the hindsight to be more selective, he opens his laptop again.

_________

Work derails him.

It’s funny to think about that way. A job that utilizes superhuman abilities to intercept world level threats, that is sometimes just really fucking inconvenient.

But it is. And there are times when that inconvenience really pisses him off. 

Like when a days long recon gets pushed up, and instead of planning a _researched_ evening in after your busy weekend, he’s squabbling over mission details with Sam.

“Guys-” Steve interjects several times to no avail, feeble mitigation they both ignore, words growing louder and more combative until Tony, in his usual stupid, pop culture driven bravado, flips his palms out and pronounces, “Gentleman, you can’t fight in here! This is the war room.”

But it’s enough to unite them. To elicit a, “Shut up,” from Sam, and an “Eat me, Stark,” from around the pen Bucky’s wedged between his teeth.

“Oh, you’re _far_ past shelf life for that, Army ration,” he quips right back, grinning like man who knows what he’s doing. And an hour later, Bucky’s throwing clothes haphazardly into a duffel while apologizing to you profusely on the phone.

“Buck,” you reassure from the other end, “I know what I signed up for. Your job’s important.”

“ _You’re_ important.”

“They aren’t mutually exclusive. We’ll make plans when you’re home. I’ll take the day. In the meantime all that matters is you stay safe. So…stay safe. That’s an order.”

“Yes ma’am,” he promises, that firm tone tugging a smile from the corner of his mouth.

He hits the road with more levity than before, and honestly, he owes you the world for that.

So Sam can catch him hunched over his phone, scrolling through _The Psychology of the Orgasm Gap_ \- he really doesn’t give a shit.

———-

“Do you come?”

“…What?”

The question is born a little out of insecurity. Again. Chronic overthinking combined with an overachiever’s tenacity, coupled with a slow, uncomplicated assignment that tests his patience and joints more than anything. 

After he’s reassured you the most danger he’s in is of stiff knees from hours of squatting and watching, after he’s asked about your day, and after Sam has disappeared into the motel bathroom for a shower, the regurgitation of his now _over_ -researched curiosity comes up in one simple blunted concern that leaves you stymied on the other line.

“I’m feelin’ like a jerk for asking on the phone,” he admits, tufting fingers through freshly washed hair and sucking in a nervous breath, “A bigger one for uh…not making sure in the moment. But I guess I’ve been caught a little vulnerable, if I’m being honest-”

“Vulnerable?” You interrupt, a measured laugh from your lips that isn’t judgement, but uncertainty more than anything, “What brought that on? Did I-”

“What? No. Sweetheart, it’s all me,” he urges into the phone. From the bathroom, Sam’s tenor carries over the whoosh of the shower. _Love_ _to_ _Me_ from _Light in the Piazza_ and Bucky sort of hates him for it.And maybe he hates himself a little, too, for even bringing any of this up. 

But, “Talk to me, Buck,” you reassure gently from the other end. And he remembers why it’s so easy to.

So he does.

He tells you all of it. The days long declension of feeling left out of a joke, to Steve’s maybe ill advised _internet’s_ _your_ _friend_ , to him naively half expecting everything to be stepped out like some sexy Wikihow- to note taking and link trailing until he was deeper in and even more certain that everything he was doing was probably wrong.

It feels good to let it out. So fucking good, even, to laugh at it and to make you laugh at every absurd thought he’s had along the way without fear of judgement. And goddamn what an invaluable treasure it is to have _that_ in the world, and if he’s confident of anything, it’s that he’s pretty sure he is absolutely head over heels in lo-

-well, that’s definitely not something he’s going to tell you over the phone. Not for the first time, anyway. 

“For the record,” you say, “the internet is never your friend when you’re feeling worried or insecure.”

“Yeah, noted,” he grins into the phone, newly weightless.

“And for the _other_ record, Bucky,” he doesn’t miss the timbre shift of your voice, “I _do_ come. And I thought I made that pretty evident.”

“Ah-” his heart thumps and he swallows, momentarily stunned.

“Are you thinking about it?”

It catches him a bit off guard. Because, frankly, _yes_ \- but the near purr with which you ask is a little unexpected. Definitely not _unwanted_ , that teasing lilt all too aware you are coaxing him into uncharted waters. But he’s a modern man, dammit. He may have a few things to learn, but he isn’t stupid.

So, “Thinking about you,” he quips back, mirroring your tone.

“What am I doing?”

He smirks, “ _Me_.”

“Is that what would be happening right now? If you were here?

“Depends,” he cheeks, “What are you wearing?”

“What do you want me to wear?”

He doesn’t even have to consider, his mouth offering up the image his mind has readily conjured, “The shirt you wore Saturday. My shirt.”

“The red one?”

“Mm. Unbuttoned. And there’s nothing underneath.”

“You gonna use those hands to keep me warm, then?”

He’s hot under the collar, suddenly. A creeping warmth that rises in tandem with his heartbeat because, _oh_ , is he really thinking about it now.

“Not just,” he swallows, “not just hands.”

“Your mouth?” you venture, “Tell me what you’re gonna do. With that mouth-”

“Sweetheart. I’m gonna-”

 _Combust_ , he thinks. Bomb fragile, fused by horny musings. _God_ , is he so easy to get going?

“Put it between my thighs?” You suggest on whispered breath, “Right where I need you, Buck?”

 _Yep_.

One quick flash of heated flame followed by a slow ash smolder to his demise. It wouldn’t be the worst way to go.

Emboldened by your candor, he answers, “You’re gonna ride my mouth, honey. I’m gonna sit you on my face and make you feel so good. Gonna fuck you so good, sweetheart, right where you need me.”

He’ll recall those words, a bit foreign on his tongue, later when his dick isn’t throbbing and probably want to crawl into a hole and die. 

But for now, he only hears the way they make you sigh. And he doesn’t know how much if any is for show, to pull him from this vanilla insecurity he’s ensconced himself in, but hell, his heart is racing and his palms feel clammy and he likes it. He _really_ fucking likes it.

“Buck. Hearin’ you talk like that…makes me feel so good.” 

“You touchin yourself, sweetheart?” He presses.

“Wishing it were you-”

_Boom. Sizzle._

“Me too. You’ve no idea how much I wish it were me. Let me hear you. Let me hear how good it feels when you touch your-” abruptly, the bathroom door swings open. 

Sam steps out, swathed in billowed steam, and in his shock and surprise, Bucky quickly stammers out, “ _staff_! Your staff has been very helpful, thank you for the complimentary services, _okaythankyouagaingoodnight_ ,” before quickly dropping his phone into the sheets around his lap.

Pathetic.

“I don’t wanna know what services you’re _really_ talking about over there,” Sam says slowly, after a silence so prolonged it becomes painful, “but this is a Super 8.” 

Bucky grunts something noncommittal, shifting beneath his blanket to hide his rapidly deflating but not rapidly enough erection. On the other end of his phone, still discarded between the folds of his sheets, he can hear your poorly suppressed giggle.

_____

It takes two more days and a few well placed throat punches to get what they came for. The melee of escalation on his end combined with work on yours leaves time for little more than quick safety check-ins and one risque shot texted to him in the middle of the night that fuels his drive to fight - hellfire and vibranium - his way back home to you. 

Sam, for either his benefit or Bucky’s own, mentions nothing more of the compromising position he may or may not have caught him in. And Bucky revisits that soft intro into phone sex on the trip back that, despite every other imperfect happening, has him operating at a net positive as a man in the Information Age.

Technology…is maybe more his friend than _not_.

He touches home turf with restless feet that tap out an impatient rhythm for the duration of their debriefing. Anxious fingers scroll the column of unanswered texts announcing his homecoming, and he’s very nearly jumping from his skin by the time it’s over, eager to pack a change of clothes and head your way, wherever that may be. His phone is still ringing, waiting for your answer, when he vaults across the building and up the stairs to his door…where he promptly drops it onto the floor.

“Oh holy shit,” he breathes, in the most undignified manner possible, stricken with realization of the fantasy that’s enveloped his thoughts since he uttered it over the phone to you. 

Not like he gives a shit about his dignity in a moment like this. At the sight of you standing there in red. His shirt, unbuttoned, open just enough to see you’re wearing nothing beneath.

“Welcome home, soldier,” you grin.

He closes the door with a haphazard nudge of his hip, and closes the distance between the two of you on legs that feel weightless. 

A playful tease about giving a guy a warning dies somewhere in the back of his throat as his hands slide around your waist and his mouth slants over your own.

He kisses you, prurient and eager. And in the only semblance of smooth he can muster, he sweeps you up mid kiss and carries you back to his bedroom, toeing off his boots before falling back onto the mattress with you.

“Missed you,” he groans, nudging his face into the crook of your neck so that you squirm and laugh and answer, “Gonna show me how much?”

And yeah. Yes, he is. And he isn’t going to waste any time about it, either.

It doesn’t work out the way he’s imagined. The buildup does, but the execution- well, he’s beneath you, hands gripped on your thighs, eager mouth chasing tentative you before he slips his gaze up to your worried expression and tips his head back and asks, “What is it, sweetheart? Am I doing something wrong?”

“No no. No, it feels…good, Buck. So good, just-” and you frown, “I’m sorry- can you _breathe_?”

And only moments later, you’re beside him, laughing with him over the perfect imperfection of it all. 

“I’m sorry,” you say again, ”I know that’s what you wanted-”

“Sweetheart. All I’ve wanted is to make you feel good. I don’t care the way. You just tell me what you like , and I’ve got the rest.”

So you do.

You lie on your back and sift your fingers through his hair and guide him with soft directives, _Just_ _there_ , _Like_ _that_ , _Ooh_ , _keep_ _doing_ _that_ , _Bucky_ - _oh_. 

You navigate it together. And he makes you come, thighs tensed over his shoulders as you gasp and writhe and his name spills between your parted lips, and goddamn, it is really fucking beautiful. 

“I love you,” you tell him, when his mouth is level with yours again, and your gaze is all blissed and dreamlike and swelled with adoration that makes him soft.

“You mean that?” He murmurs. 

He can’t believe it took him so long, but thank it all, he guesses. Thank his naivety. Thank the internet. Thank his chronic overthinking and thank sexy phone calls and sexier photos. Thank moments that don’t quite turn out how they’re expected, but turn out perfect all the same. And thank you, _oh_ _god_ , thank you for that sweet, affectionate stare, and those three words that make his heart cartwheel inside his chest. Because _of_ _course_ you do. Of course you mean it. 

“I love you,” he says back, “Jesus, I really love you, do you even know?”

“I had a little inkling.”

“Little one?” He asks, pressing the light from between his thumb and index finger in a gesture you mimic as you smile.

“Baby one,” you say, “And it’s my turn, now. So pants off, Barnes.”

He barks a laugh at that as you move to shift down the bed.

“ _So_ romantic,” he jokes.

But really, in a way that articles on the internet could never actually convey, it is.


End file.
